Art; Culture & creativity
19 Feb 2024 - Elliott Brown
Gallery
The Bullring presents Borealis by Dan Acher - 9th to 18th February 2024
From the 9th to 18th February 2024 at the Bullring in Birmingham was an art installation by Dan Acher called Borealis. Based on the Northern Lights or the Aurora Borealis. It was on Central Street (St Martin's Walk) for 10 days from 5pm to 9pm each evening. Best seen after dark, as the effect didn't really work in daylight I found. Smoke machines and ambient music.
The Bullring presents Borealis by Dan Acher - 9th to 18th February 2024
From the 9th to 18th February 2024 at the Bullring in Birmingham was an art installation by Dan Acher called Borealis. Based on the Northern Lights or the Aurora Borealis. It was on Central Street (St Martin's Walk) for 10 days from 5pm to 9pm each evening. Best seen after dark, as the effect didn't really work in daylight I found. Smoke machines and ambient music.
BOREALIS THE NORTHERN LIGHTS - ANYTIME, ANYWHERE Borealis recreates one of nature’s most awe-inspiring phenomena over cities around the world. It shifts our emotional experience of familiar urban landmarks and awakens a shared conscience by creating something magical - something that shouldn’t naturally be there. Borealis is about our ancestral communion with nature and our more recent compulsion to control it. As our planet’s climate breaks down, the question arises: will technology one day replace everything that nature currently provides for us?
Dan Acher's Borealis was held at the Bullring on St Martin's Walk above St Martin's Square (aka Central Street) from the 9th to 18th February 2024. Time started each evening at 5pm, ended each night at 9pm. Every evening attracted a big crowd looking at the artificial Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights. Personally I think they should have started it a month earlier, as between 5pm and 6pm, it's not that dark in February, although getting dark after sunset, which is getting a bit later each day now.
11th February 2024
First spotted one of the Borealis light towers from Edgbaston Street, after walking from Southside between buses.
Nice sunset down St Martin's Walk to St Martin in the Bullring, at approx 4:50pm, so 10 minutes before Borealis was due to start. This day I didn't wait for the lights to turn on.
This day, I waited the 5 minutes until 5pm for the multi-coloured lights to turn on, but was cloudy, and you don't really get the full Borealis effect at this time, but noticed the smoke machines going on.
That evening was when I hoped to catch Borealis after dark, I even popped to Costa Coffee in Grand Central beforehand after work, but I got there at 5:30pm and it wasn't dark yet, but got the full effect, and not much to see from St Martin's Square below.
The last evening, one more attempt, so got the bus up from home, then popped to Caffe Nero in Birmingham New Street Station (other coffee shops close at 5pm). Then got here for 6:30pm, and got a lot of photos of it, best I could, these are the best photos I took of Borealis.